Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Jim Kweskin & Geoff Muldaur – Penny’s Farm

When I started
collecting records obsessively in the 1960s, the LPs by Jim Kweskin & the Jug Band were – and remain – among my
favorites. Drawing on folk songs, blues, jazz and early pop and novelty songs,
the LPs were filled with fun, deceptively sophisticated, and an entrée into the
older traditions and source artists they were drawing on. Well over 50 years
after the Kweskin Jug Band got together and 40-something years since they broke
up, Jim Kweskin and band stalwart Geoff Muldaur have reunited for the
sublime Penny’s Farm, an eclectic
collection of folk-rooted and folk-branched songs played by a couple of masters
whose interpretive skills have aged like fine whiskey. Jim and Geoff each take
the lead vocal on about half the tracks.

The album opens with Jim’s version of the
traditional “Diamond Joe,” a song Alan Lomax collected from Big Charlie Butler
at the Parchman Farm prison in Mississippi in 1939, and that has become
familiar through countless interpretations by artists ranging from Cisco Houston to Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Bob
Dylan. Jim begins singing a cappella and is then joined by Suzy Thompson’s powerful fiddling, Jim
and Geoff’s guitars, Cindy Cashdollar’s
Weissenborn guitar and Geoff’s harmonies.

Jim continues to shine whenever he takes
the lead vocal. Among his highlights are “Down on Penny’s Farm,” one of several
songs on the CD drawn from Harry Smith’s
seminal Anthology of American Folk Music,
on which Jim plays banjo and Geoff is heard on pennywhistle; the infectious
African song “Guabi, Guabi,” which he first recorded on a solo LP, Relax Your Mind, in 1965; a haunting
version of “The Cuckoo,” also drawn from the Harry Smith Anthology and also a reprise from Relax Your Mind; and a couple of Mississippi John Hurt songs, “Louis Collins (Angels Laid Him Away)
– which Philadelphia Jerry Ricks once
told me was John Hurt’s very favorite of his own songs – and “Frankie,” a
variant of “Frankie and Johnny (or Albert).”

Geoff’s first lead vocal is on “The Boll
Weevil,” another folk song collected by Lomax that has become a folk music
standard in countless versions. This version is among the best I’ve heard.
Geoff is playing six-string banjo and is ably supported by Jim on harmony
vocals and guitar, Suzy on fiddle, Cindy on Dobro and Kevin Smith on bass.

Geoff, too, shines, whenever he’s at the lead
vocalist’s mic. His highlights include Henry
Thomas’ “Fishing Blues,” also drawn from the Harry Smith Anthology; “Just a Little While to Stay
Here,” a New Orleans funeral song Geoff recorded earlier on his wonderful
album, The Secret Handshake; a couple
of Beale Street Sheiks numbers, “Sweet to Mama” and “Downtown Blues” (Geoff
first recorded “Downtown Blues” in 1967 on the Kweskin Jug Band LP See Reverse Side for Title); and a fun
version of Mississippi John Hurt’s “C-h-i-c-k-e-n.”

My very favorite of Geoff’s tracks, though
is his version of Bobby Charles’
beautiful “Tennessee Blues,” a song he recorded more than 40 years ago on Geoff Muldaur is Having a Wonderful Time.
Van Dyke Parks joins the ensemble on
accordion on this version of the song.

And while Geoff may have been having a wonderful time on that
long-ago solo LP, I’ve been having a wonderful time listening to Jim and Geoff
both having a wonderful time on Penny’s
Farm.

I’ll also mention that the CD package includes an appreciation of
Jim and Geoff and the Jim Kweskin Jug Band by John Sebastian and informative song notes by Mary Katherine Aldin.

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About Me

I'm an editor, writer and broadcaster now based in Ottawa who has written about folk and roots music since the 1970s for Sing Out! Magazine and the Montreal Gazette and other Canadian newspapers. My radio show, Folk Roots/Folk Branches, was on CKUT in Montreal from 1994-2007. I'm now one of the rotating hosts of Saturday Morning on CKCU in Ottawa where my programming is based on the Folk Roots/Folk Branches format I developed at CKUT. I'm also one of the occasional co-hosts of Canadian Spaces on CKCU. In the 1970s and ‘80s I ran a folk club, the Golem, and produced most of Montreal’s folk-oriented concerts. I also booked tours for Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Priscilla Herdman, Rosalie Sorrels, Mason Daring & Jeanie Stahl, Bill Staines, Guy Van Duser & Billy Novick and Dakota Dave Hull & Sean Blackburn. In 2014, I was the recipient of the Ottawa Folk Festival's Helen Verger Award for "significant, sustained contributions to folk/roots music in Canada." In 2017, I was one of the inaugural inductees into the Folk DJ Hall of Fame created by Folk Alliance International.